At the Heart of Scrapbooking

I received a very touching e-mail from a good friend last night.  It nearly broke my heart.  She had just returned from the memorial service of a friend.  She knew this friend through her childrens’ preschool and they had shared a love of scrapbooking.  This lovely woman was a mother, wife, sister, daughter and friend.  At the back of the reception room, the family had displayed the many scrapbooks this woman had created during her life.  My friend said it was so meaningful, that all the other preschool moms came to her after the service and asked to be taught how to scrapbook.  They were touched by the value of what this woman had done, the beautiful legacy she had left for her children.

I was touched that my friend asked me to join her in this meaningful endeavor, to teach others to scrapbook, and we’re working on dates we can get together with everyone.  Honestly, it just made me cry and it made me grateful (yes, this is where I get really sappy on you…).  How much do we all take for granted this wonderful craft we do, scrapbooking?  Our non-scrapping friends don’t always understand us.  Our husbands may poke fun, or wonder if it’s really worth the money we spend on supplies and the time away from home that we spend at crops.  We as scrappers may even get distracted by the desire to ‘buy the latest and greatest supplies’ or ‘I have to get published so everyone will see me in print’.  But this story really reminded me why, at the core, we do what we do.  It’s for the love of our families, the respect for where we came from and where we’re going, and the need to share our daily lives and lessons with our children and extended famly.

Please let me stay focused on that – when I’m feeling like I just can’t get a page to look ‘right’, when I’m embarrassed to post my layouts on message boards because ‘I’m just not good enough’, and when I crave that new product I may not really need ‘just because it would be cool’.  Scrapbooking really isn’t about all the fluff, it’s way more important than that.  I hope that when I pass on, my scrapbooks will be displayed as this woman’s were.  I want every person in my family, all of my friends, to know how much they meant to me.  I also want them to know that I was always evolving in life, and always trying to become a better person.  I think my scrapbooks would say all the things to them that I could no longer say.